Слово утешения к скорбящим инокам

“Child,” says the Scripture, “if you begin to work for the Lord God, prepare your soul for temptation: guide your heart and be patient... Whatever is dealt to you, accept it, and be patient when your heart changes” (Sir. 2:1-2, 4). From the beginning of the century, tribulations have been a sign of God’s election. They were a sign of God's pleasure for patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and saints. All the saints walked the narrow path of temptation and sorrow, and through their patience they offered themselves as a favorable sacrifice to God. And now, according to the will of God, holy souls are allowed various misfortunes, so that their love for God may be revealed in all clarity. Nothing happens to a person without the permission and permission of God. A Christian who wants to be a follower of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to become by grace a son of God, born of the Spirit, must first of all make it a rule, make it an indispensable duty, complacent patience with all sorrows: bodily suffering, and insults from people, and slander from demons, and the very rebellion of his own passions. A Christian who wants to please God most of all needs patience and firm trust in God. He must constantly hold this weapon in his mental right hand: because our crafty enemy, the devil, for his part, uses all means to plunge us into despondency during sorrow and rob us of our hope in the Lord. God never allows His true slaves to be tempted by temptations that exceed their strength. “God is faithful,” says the holy Apostle Paul, “who will not leave you to be tempted more than you are able, but will create with temptation also an abundance (deliverance), so that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). The devil, being a creature and servant of God, embitters the soul not as much as he wants, but as much as is permitted by God. If people do not know what kind of weight different beasts of burden can carry, then all the more does God’s infinite Wisdom know what degree of temptation is appropriate for each soul. The poor man knows how long earthen vessels should be kept in the fire, which, if over-exposed, disintegrate, and if under-exposed, are unfit for use, all the more so does God know what strength and degree of fire of temptation is needed for the verbal vessels of God - Christians, so that they become capable of inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven. The youth is incapable of performing ministries in the world: he is incapable of managing a house, cultivating the land and other everyday activities. So often souls, being already partakers of Divine grace, but not tempted by sorrows inflicted by evil spirits, not witnessed by these sorrows, remain in infancy, and, so to speak, are incapable of the kingdom of heaven. “If you are without punishment,” says the Apostle, “all are partakers of him: for you are naturally adulterous, and not of sons” (Heb. 12:8). Temptations and sorrows are sent down to a person for his benefit: the soul formed by them becomes strong and honest before its Lord. If she endures everything to the end in trust in God, then it is impossible for her to lose the benefits promised by the Holy Spirit and complete liberation from passions. Souls, being betrayed to various sorrows, obvious, inflicted by people, or secret, from the uprising of obscene thoughts in the mind, or bodily illnesses, if they endure all this to the end, then they are awarded the same crowns with the martyrs and the same boldness with them. The martyrs suffered misfortunes from people. They willingly submitted themselves to torture and showed courageous patience until death. The more varied and difficult their feat was, the more glory they gained, the more boldness they received towards God. Monks suffer from evil spirits. The greater the misfortunes the devil inflicts on them, the greater the glory they will receive in the next century from God, the greater consolation they will receive from the Holy Spirit here, during their earthly wanderings, in the midst of their sufferings. The path leading to the eternal belly is narrow and sad; few people walk on it; but he is the inalienable and inevitable property of all those who are saved. You shouldn't shy away from it! We will endure every temptation inflicted on us by the devil with firmness and constancy, looking with the eye of faith at the reward prepared in heaven. Whatever sorrows we may be subjected to during earthly life, they cannot in any way be compared with the blessings promised to us in eternity, or with the consolation that the Holy Spirit gives here, or with deliverance from the dominion of passions, or with the remission of many of our debts - with these inevitable consequences of complacent patience with sorrows. “The passions of the present time are unworthy,” i.e. The present temporary sufferings mean nothing, says the Apostle, “for the glory that desires to be revealed in us,” i.e. in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us when we are renewed by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:18). We will courageously endure everything for the sake of the Lord, as brave warriors should endure, not fearing death for their King. Why were we not subjected to such and such grief when we served the world and worldly concerns? Why, now that we have begun to serve God, are we subjected to various calamities? – Know: for Christ’s sake sorrows rain down on us like arrows. Our enemy, the devil, releases them on us in order to take revenge on us for the eternal blessings that we hope and try to obtain - together, in order to weaken our souls with sadness, despondency, laziness, and thereby deprive us of the bliss we expect. Christ fights invisibly for us. This strong and invincible Defender of ours destroys all the intrigues and tricks of our enemy. He Himself, He Himself, our Lord and Savior, walked throughout His entire earthly life along a narrow and sorrowful path - no other. He was constantly persecuted, endured many reproaches, ridicule and misfortunes - finally, a dishonorable death on the cross between two thieves. Let's follow Christ! Let us humble ourselves like Him! Like Him, we will not refuse to be known as flatterers and frenzied: we will not spare our honor, we will not turn away our faces from being spat upon and our cheeks from being blown; Let us not seek glory, beauty, or pleasures that belong to this world; Let us make our earthly journey as pilgrims who have nowhere to lay our heads; let us accept, let us accept reproach, humiliation and contempt from people as integral accessories of our chosen path; Let us openly and secretly fight the thoughts of pride, and vigorously overthrow these thoughts of our old man, who seeks to revive his “I,” under various plausible pretexts. Then the Son of God, who said “I will dwell in them and walk around” (2 Cor. 6:16), will appear in our hearts and give us the power and strength to bind the strong one, to plunder his vessels, to step on the asp and the basilisk; trample them 396. Let us reject grumbling, reject complaints about our fate, reject heartfelt sadness and melancholy, from which weak souls suffer more than from sorrows themselves. Let us reject all thoughts of revenge and repaying evil for evil. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” said the Lord (Rom. 12:19). Do you want to endure sorrows with ease and comfort? – May death for Christ be desirable to you. May this death be constantly before your eyes. Mortify yourself daily by abstaining from all sinful desires of the flesh and spirit; mortify yourself by rejecting your will and rejecting self-justifications brought by the false mind and evil conscience of the old man; kill yourself by vividly imagining and painting your inevitable death. We are given the commandment to follow Christ by taking up our cross. This means: we must always be ready to die for Christ with joy and gladness. If we arrange ourselves this way, then we will easily endure all sorrow, visible and invisible. Whoever wants to die for Christ, what misfortune, what insult will he not endure generously? Our sorrows seem difficult to us precisely because we do not want to die for Christ, we do not want to enclose all our desires, all our hopes, all our minds, all our wealth, our entire existence in Him alone. Anyone who strives to follow Christ and be a joint heir with Him must be a zealous imitator of His sufferings. Those who love Christ and His followers discover and prove their hidden deposit by enduring every sorrow He sends down not only with complacency, but also with zeal, and with zeal, and with joy, and with thanksgiving, placing all their trust in Christ. Such patience is a gift of Christ. This gift will be accepted by the one who asks for it through humble and constant prayer from Christ, proving the sincerity of the desire to receive the priceless spiritual gift of patience by coercion and painful violence of an unwilling heart to endure all the sorrows and temptations encountered and occurring 397. Amen. This article is borrowed mainly from the 7th word of St. Macarius the Great. See chapters 13–18. Venerable Macarius. Word 4, ch. 15. Saint Isaac of Syria. Word 37. You might be interested in: